[Galaxy S I9000 General] Chainfire:
And now, a word from your friendly neighbourhood moderators!

As you may know some of our Android device forums are a bit "messy", with your help, let's see if we can keep the i9000 forums clean! This is a bit of an experiment, to see if posts like these help at all. Most of the following is simple common sense, and for most of you it will hopefully bring nothing new.

Moderators

The official i9000 forums moderator is Sirphunkee. I, Chainfire will also be hanging around here quite a bit.

Rules

Please consult the forum rules before posting, they can be found here: http://xdaforums.com/announcement.php?f=263#post81

Additions

The rules should be clear enough, however I will repeat some points for emphasis and post some additions here as well.

Use the search

This speaks for itself, though many still don't use it.

Check the i9000 FAQ before posting

It can be found here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=723596

Don't post in the

android development

section ...

... unless you are absolutely sure it belongs there! The developers / hackers are trying to work, don't bother them with things that do not belong there.

When in doubt, post in the

general

section. If it's a question, post in the

Q&A

section

If you're not sure, it probably should NOT go into the

android development

section.

Treat eachother with respect

No flaming, no personal attacks, be nice, behave, show respect. While you may be responding to somebody who has asked a question you might find dumb, or he didn't use the search, or whatever reason you think you may have, it is

never ever

warranted to be flaming anyone, and it simply will not be tolerated.

Ignore

flames, personal attacks, etc

If these should occur, do not respond to them! Especially when they are directed at you, this is hard to do and you want to defend yourself. Suppres this urge! Responding to these is "feeding the troll", and only serves to bring a thread further off-topic and make it much harder for us moderators to clean up the mess. Responding to these posts makes you part of the problem, and doesn't help anyone. See below for how to report these to have a moderator look at it, and if needed, remove it. Don't let the trolls win!

Saying thank you

This forum does not come with a "thank you" button like some other forums do. While for example if you post a question and others help you out, saying "thank you" is nice, in many development threads saying thank you only serves to clutter to thread. Please do not post a comment saying nothing more than "thank you" in these threads - instead perhaps consider giving the developer a small donation to show your appreciation, give the thread a 5-star rating, or help out in some other way (like assisting others with their problems).

Helping out

There are many of you, and only a few of us moderators. Like you, we are mere humans, we are not paid for being here, and our time is limited - we cannot read every post of every thread. The first few things you can do to help out is behave, assist others, follow the rules, and make sure you are not the (negative) reason that we need to look at a thread or post. But there's more you can do to be of assistance:

Reporting posts

Each post has a "report" button associated with it, found at the top-right of the post. It a triangle with an exclamation mark inside of it, and hard to miss. Clicking it will give you a box you can use to add a comment, and then the post in question will be brought to the attention of the moderators. Be short and precise when writing the comment. While your biography is undoubtedly an interesting thing to read, it has no place in that comment box :) Please

verify

that the post is actually against the rules of XDA (see link at the top of this post) before reporting a post. The additions I have posted here, unless they are also present in the XDA rules, are not enforced by other moderators.

Posts in the wrong section

I see a lot of comments on threads that they are in the wrong section. Please handle these threads in the following way:

Check that nobody else has already posted that the thread is in the wrong section. Do not clutter the thread with notices about how the thread starter is in the wrong place, one notice is enough!

If you're the first, post that the thread should have been (for example) in the

general

or

Q&A

section instead of the

android development

section, in a kind and respectful way, and ...

report the post, putting something like "not development, please move to general" in the comment box.

Flames, personal attacks, (severe) disrespect

Even though these are against the rules, they will still happen. As stated above, it is generally not a good idea to respond to them. However, depending on how offensive they are, you might wish to report them for moderator attention. Do so in the following way:

Check that nobody else has already posted that he reported the post. Do not clutter the thread with notices, responses to a flame, etc. One notice is enough!

If you appear to be the first, you might want to post that you have reported said post (without quoting it!), and ...

check if others have quoted the flame, personal attack, etc in their replies, and ...

report the post, putting something like "flame, has been quoted / responded to by others". This makes our job faster to do!

Violations of other rules

These will happen. Again, check if others have already (kindly and respectfully) notified the poster that his behaviour is against the rules. You might want to report such a violation, but please take a moment to think about it, and do not go on a "reporting spree". Is the violation really so severe that it needs to be "handled" by moderators ? Does a moderator really need to warn this user about his behaviour ? Does the post really need to be modified by a moderator ? For example, for some light verbal abuse / explicit language, you might just want to (kindly) ask the user to tone his language down a bit and/or edit his own post, instead of turning to a moderator.

Don't go on a reporting spree

As stated above, think hard about reporting a post before you do it. For example, don't go to

android development

section and report threads from page 3 to be in the wrong area. The thread is likely already dead, and requesting to have it moved is a waste of both your and our time. Use common sense!

Other

The "star rating" system is not useless

You can rate a thread with up to 5 stars. Please use this ability, it makes it easy to spot high quality and low quality threads for others browsing these forums.

Don't PM myself or Sirphunkee unless you really have to

We get enough PM's as it is. Most things can be resolved without sending us a PM personally. For example by reporting a post, or posting in this thread here.

Need more empty posts at the top of your thread ?

It is not uncommon that you have ran out of space in the first post of your thread (especially with "release" threads). Feel free to request additional "first posts" for your thread by posting in this thread here.

Do you really think a certain thread should (or should no longer) be a sticky ?

Again, feel free to post that here in this thread. Obviously, do not request your own threads to be stickied. If it is worthy, others will request it for you.

Anything you would like to add or request ?

Feel free to post it in here, but please remain on-topic.

The end!

Hopefully this will have a positive effect and is generally helpful, if not, I'll just remove this thread again.

I will try to keep up with the posts in here !